World Cup 2014: What's wrong with Brazil?
By Tim Vickery
BBC Sport
Monday must surely have been a great day for Brazilian cardiologists.
After the scare of the previous Saturday's second-round tie against Chile, when Brazil scraped through on penalties, the entire country felt like having a check-up.
"How much did you suffer?" was a frequent Monday morning greeting.
For Brazil's legion of admirers all around the world, one of the dominant emotions was probably disappointment. Win, lose or draw, people always expect more from the five times world champions.
They want to feel like the Argentine coach Angel Cappa, who was in Spain for the 1982 World Cup, and gleefully recalls that when he was watching Brazil "the ball arrived in one part of the field and disappeared to reappear again in the form of a rabbit and then a dove, and then hide again as the opponents rushed about trying to find it, all of us in the stadium looked at our watches with the intention of making time stand still because we wanted the game to go on for ever".
The 2014 model Brazil may battle their way through the rounds and go on to win the World Cup but they will surely not be remembered all around the world with the same affection of their predecessors from 1982, who did not even reach the semi-finals. Why not?
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